


Today You're A World Away

by Rinielle



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 21:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/790398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinielle/pseuds/Rinielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Quinn becomes a well known actress and Finn sees her talking in an interview about her character and how she relates the love story on screen to a one she had in high school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Today You're A World Away

It’s funny, Finn thinks as he looks around his classroom, how everything can change and yet everything seems to have remained the same. It’s been six years since he graduated McKinley, five years since he left it for good, four years since he’s met up regularly with anyone from that time aside from Rachel and Kurt; he’s only had very occasional visits from Puck. It’s been two years since his last email from Rachel; lengthy and emotional but necessarily so, he still has it saved somewhere in his inbox, though he hasn’t needed to read it since. Two years also since he officially became a teacher and a year since he took up a post in Toledo; only an hour or so from his home, so his mum is happy. He has his first home-room class to attend to right now, and normally he has very few problems with them; despite a slightly shaky start he is actually a very good teacher, and on a normal day they would respect his authority. Not today apparently.

“Do you have a girlfriend sir?”  
He sighs lightly, and raises his voice to be heard over the torrent of other queries.  
 “Not important, sit down. Chloe would you put that magazine away!”  
“Do you know Lucy Fabray sir?”  
“Your first name is Finn, right sir?”  
“Did you used to date her sir?”  
“Who in their right mind would dump Lucy Fabray!”  
  
It’s been just over seven years since he broke up with Quinn in that car. Five years since he’s seen her at all. Everything has changed. None of them live in Lima, Ohio anymore. Finn is a teacher now, and Quinn has become an actress – a damn good one at that, not that he’s been following her progress too closely – and is promoting for her first major lead role; she’s even gone back to her old name. Their worlds couldn’t be further apart than they are, and yet six years since high school ended, the major conversation topic is still Finn Hudson and Quinn Fabray’s relationship. Apparently some interview or other had wrangled Finn’s name out of Quinn’s past somehow and it’s spread around the room like wildfire. It takes almost the entire home-room session, and several reassurances that the name is just a coincidence, to get them to calm down. He knows that come tomorrow they’ll all have done their homework on him and will have realised that he’s lying; perhaps they do already and are just taking pity on him. Still, they manage to get through the days notices before the bell goes, and that’s really all that matters for now.

Chloe Gillan drops her magazine on his desk as she leaves the room. “You should watch the interview sir. You might find it interesting,” she says with a small smile. She’s a sweet kid. She reminds him a little bit of Marley Rose.

He takes a moment to breath in the silence of his classroom, before thirty more kids come tumbling through the door, and the whole thing starts all over again. He has to get his teacher voice out in order to get any work out of them at all.

He comes back to his flat more exhausted than usual. Even some of the teachers had questioned him over the interview; as a kid he’d always thought teachers would have more important things to discuss than magazine gossip, but three years working in schools has shattered every illusion he has on that front. Teachers are just as shallow as the rest of the world really.

He walks into his living room, tosses his keys on the coffee table and falls backwards to sprawl over the couch. His laptop is sitting on the floor beside him, and he pulls it up onto his lap and decidedly does not look up the interview Quinn gave the night before. Instead he plans some upcoming lessons, writes out a letter to the parents of one of his more troubling kids and scrolls through some funny pictures of cats. He contemplates the large amount of marking he has in his briefcase, and after an internal battle with his conscience he determines that putting it off will only make the pile grow and give him more to do tomorrow. It’s with a groan that he pushes himself off the couch and pads towards the dining table, picking his case off the floor and almost slamming it onto the table. Marking is the bane of his existence.

He opens up the cases and pulls out the stack of homework he has to get through. There’re sixty five tests in all today, and not for the first time he regrets having whined so much about homework as a teenager; at least they only have to go through each bit once. Some of the papers slip out of the middle of the pile and fall to the ground, and it’s a great start to his evening as they slip under a nearby cupboard. He quickly puts the rest firmly on the table and goes to dig them out. There’s something rather too bulky to be a kids homework in the pile, and he shuffles the papers to find the magazine he’d stuffed rather haphazardly into his case to keep it out of sight of the kids. He sighs as he finds Quinn’s face staring up at him with a radiant smile.

As a rule he tries not to think about Quinn too much, though it’s difficult when her name has started to pop up all over the media. He saw her in a film once without realising she was in it and promptly spilt popcorn all over his date at the time; she hadn’t been too impressed, but he was too shocked to even notice. She’d only had a smallish role in that film, but since then she’d been becoming more and more prominent, and her confidence, beauty and natural charisma had quickly made her a media favourite. She looks good, he thinks as he stares at her photo on the magazine. He knows there’s been some photo-shopping done - her eyes are just slightly the wrong shade – but she’s always been stunning and the last seven years have only done good things for her. He feels the tug in his chest he always used to get at the sight of her, and his eyes flicker to the stack of homework on the table, and then to his abandoned laptop on the couch. He bites his lip before sighing. How long can an interview be anyway? He has all evening. He makes his way back to the couch and pulls open his laptop again.

It doesn’t take long to find the interview, apparently the world is greatly anticipating Quinn’s upcoming movie; a high school rom-com, something he suspects every actor and actress has to do as an initiation to the club, or something. He pauses only a moment before hitting play and the host of a show Finn doesn’t know appears on his screen.

“And last but by no means least, a young actress who has taken the world by storm this year, picking up roles left right and centre – we really don’t know how she does it –  to discuss her first lead role in the new major motion picture ‘Firewall’ please give it up for Lucy Quinn Fabray!” cheers and shrieks and whistle blare loudly through Finn’s speakers as Quinn is walking out to take centre stage. The tug in his chest his back again as she flashes an almost shy smile at one of the camera’s; he knows that smile so well, he misses it more than he’d realised. It was his favourite once upon a time.

Suddenly sure that this was not a good idea he reaches to shut the page down; but when she smiles even brighter, he can’t bring himself to do it. She takes a seat next to the show’s host and thanks him for having her. The first half of the interview is light and funny, and she talks about her previous roles and some funny behind the scenes stories for the new movie, they even talk briefly about Beth, a child at sixteen not being something that can be kept a secret for long in the world of the rich and famous. Quinn is more out of her element there, and Finn wishes he could reach through the screen to hold her hand. Beth will be almost eight now Finn realises with a jolt, she might even have watched this interview. It looks like Quinn is thinking about that too, as her eyes keep flicking towards the cameras. Perhaps the interviewer realises that it’s an uncomfortable subject, because he moves it on quite fast.

“But back to your latest movie,” and Quinn’s whole body seems to relax, “High school movies are pretty plentiful, what is it do you think that makes them so popular?”  
Quinn smiles at that, “I think it’s something that everyone can relate to, we’ve all been to high school, and experienced all that drama, even though movies often over-exaggerate it, there’s definitely something familiar in it, and it’s easy to find a character you can see yourself in,” she has a nice interview style, Finn thinks, she’s lost some of the edge that high school gave her, and she seems more relaxed. It’s a change, but not a bad one, she seems happier.

“Now, you play a girl called Maisie in this movie, a cheerleader right?” Quinn nods and laughs a little, “Little birdies have told me that you were a cheerleader in high school,”  
“I was,” she says smiling, “Several times actually. Long story,” she adds when the interviewer gives her a questioning look, “But I really hope that I was better at it than Maisie, she tries so hard, but it’s really not for her,”  
“We’ll come back to that long story some other time, I’m dying to hear it, but we’re running out of time,” Quinn’s smile suggests she already knew that, and Finn glances at the time on the bottom of the video; there’s only a couple of minutes left, “Final question then. As we’ve said, High School movies are all over the place, what is it about Firewall that sets it apart, in your opinion,”

Quinn is quiet for a moment, obviously thinking about her answer before she begins, “It’s a little more real, I think. It plays around with the stereotypes of other high school movies, and challenges them. We really tried to be a little more truthful to high school. I don’t want to give too much away, but I drew a lot of inspiration from my own experiences in school, especially for the romantic aspect of the film.” The host doesn’t let her get away with leaving it there, instead raising an eyebrow and saying ‘Oh?’ and she laughs a little before continuing, but there’s something a little sad in her voice as she begins again. “The love story in Firewall, for my character, is very similar to a boyfriend I had in high school. He was my first love, and we had a lot of issues but… I think at the time I always thought we’d end up together, and I hoped so because he was a really great guy for me. In a way, I guess he was the love of my life, Finn Hudson was always there for me when I needed him…” she pauses for a moment looking slightly stricken, and Finn realises she hadn’t intended to actually give his name. His heart is pounding in his chest as all the memories come flooding back to him; the good and the bad. There’s a reason why he tries not to think about Quinn, a reason why he knew watching this interview would be a bad idea. He remembers a conversation at a locker – they hadn’t even been together at the time – ‘ _I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have feelings for you_ ’ he had said, and it had been the truth, ‘ _I probably always will,_ ’ that was also true. So much had happened since that, they’d gotten back together and he’d thrown it all away again for Rachel; for a fantasy that never had a hope. Letting Quinn go counted amongst the biggest regrets of his life, but at the same time - seeing her now - he can’t help but be glad he did. He let her down so many times, he doesn’t understand how she can even speak so well of him. If they’d stayed together he could only have dragged her down. She’s done so much without him.  
“I… well anyway, these things don’t always last, though I think it’s great when they do. I miss him very much, and I tried to bring the feelings I had for him to my role and to how I interacted with Dean’s character Lewis, almost as a tribute to him, as a thank you I guess. So, if he’s out there,” she glances at a camera, and Finn’s breath catches, it’s like she’s looking right at him, “Thanks Finn,” She says quietly, with a small smile. She looks slightly nervous now, and younger for it, she’s almost the same fragile girl he remembers from high school; the one behind closed doors when there was no audience, just the two of them. He tries to fight back the tears but it’s impossible, the tug on his chest has become too painful, and as the host rounds the whole thing off and reintroduces Quinn to the audience the tears are flowing freely down his face.

The video ends but he doesn’t notice. Doesn’t notice much at all for almost an hour, until he finally runs out of tears and manages to drag himself off the couch and towards the bathroom. His face is blotchy and tear stained, and he splashes cold water on himself and rakes his hands through his hair. All thoughts of getting some work done this evening have flown out of the window entirely; right now he just feels more tired than he has in his life. So he drags himself through the house, turning off lights and putting things away, before flopping down fully clothed onto his bed. He’s probably going to regret this in the morning, but right now he doesn’t even have the energy to care; all he can see is that sad small smile, her ‘thank you’ ringing in his ears. It was hard enough to know he would never see her again for real, never hear her laugh at one of his jokes or chastise him for some un-thought-out comment, hard enough to know she was beyond him forever. To know all that and find out too late that it maybe didn’t have to be that way, that maybe if he hadn’t been so stupid and selfish and blind, they might still have had a chance… He falls asleep fast despite the thoughts spinning around in his head.

\---

When he wakes, it's earlier than usual, which makes sense since he went to sleep hours before he normally would, and at first he thinks that’s the only reason, but a loud chiming from the living room suggests it was his phone that woke him. He heaves himself off the bed, feeling grimy and horrible for sleeping in his work clothes; at least waking up early will give him the chance to shower and make himself at least look vaguely presentable.

He finds his phone in his jacket, which was slung over the back of a chair, and sliding his finger across it to start it up he finds a name he hadn’t expected to ever see again staring up at him.

**1 text: Mercedes Jones**

He blinks at it, wondering what on earth has prompted Mercedes to get back in contact with him after… is it three years or four? He can’t even remember now. Like with Quinn, all he hears about Mercedes these days is on the television or radio. Curious he opens the text. It’s short but to the point, very Mercedes.

**Call her you idiot!**

Following that is a phone number, and Finn reaches for his house phone, and never once looking away from the ten digits on his cell, he prepares to do a little acting of his own as the school receptionist picks up the line.

**Author's Note:**

> I know the prompter asked for it to be angst... but my babies have been hurt so much, and i just couldn't help adding a little ray of hope at the end there.


End file.
